Torrance’s Smog City is expecting big crowds from noon to 8 p.m. Saturday for its “Rarest of the Rare” event with about 20 rarely seen and little known beers served at two bars.

Among the promised concoctions is a Weird Beer (a five grain Saison with spices), a Grape Ape IPA made with 500lbs of flame grapes, pressed on site, and a Bourbon Collective Evil, a 2011 collaboration with Julian Shrago of Beachwood BBQ.

The newest entrant to Torrance’s rapidly growing craft brew scene is actually a refugee from San Diego where the city’s nasty political scene under its now disgraced former mayor prompted a relocation to a more welcoming business environment.

Absolution Brewing will become Torrance’s fifth craft brewery when it opens on Columbia Street, hopefully shortly before the end of the year, said co-founder Wes McCain.

The Torrance Planning Commission will consider its conditional use permit application this fall, he said.

“They’re well aware of what it takes to open a brewery,” he said. “We don’t have to teach the politicians what’s necessary.”

No they don’t, not with the city’s emergence as a craft beer center at the expense of Los Angeles, where taxes and the economic climate in general are much more onerous.

Incidentally, McCain said the brewery will concentrate on Old World beer styles made with New World hops.

Angel City Brewing, above, may have reopened earlier this year in downtown’s Arts District after relocating from a site just outside Torrance, but it’s the South Bay and other suburban locations that are ahead of Los Angeles when it comes to craft breweries (Photo by Staff Photographer Steven Carr).